The NFC (Near Field Communication) technology is based on the exchanging of data via a magnetic field. A NFC reader has an antenna which is able to modulate the magnetic field and to provide energy to NFC devices. The NFC reader is usually named a PCD (Proximity Coupling Device). A NFC device may be a PICC (Proximity Integrated Circuit Card or Proximity Card) or may embed components which act as logical PICC. A PICC and a PCD communicate thanks to an inductive coupling in a field frequency equal to 13.56 MHz. In particular, the ISO14443 and ISO18092 standards provide modulation technologies and communication protocols which may be used in NFC domain.
Several physical PICC may be present in the magnetic field of a PCD. That is why specific process allowing the PCD to enumerate the PICC have been defined. These processes are named anti-collision mechanisms.
Devices integrating wireless technologies (such as NFC) may operate according to one or several communication modes. Three operating modes (i.e. communication modes) are usually available: reader mode, card emulation mode and Peer-to-Peer (P2P) mode.
The reader mode (also named wireless reader mode) allows reading and writing other devices which are seen as a contactless card or as a contactless tag. Typically, a device operating in reader mode is able to read the content of the memory of an electronic tag or of a contactless card. Such readers may be used for payment or for controlling access to an area for example.
The card emulation mode allows the emulation of a contactless card or of a tag. The card emulation mode may be called tag mode when the device emulates a tag. An electronic tag is a passive device which is assumed to have a memory with very limited processing means unlike a contactless card which is assumed to have both a memory and computing means able to run security treatments. Basically card emulation mode and tag mode are equivalent in the sense that they must operate with a reader. In both cases there is a communication with a device operating in reader mode.
The Peer-to-Peer mode allows doing away with the master role of the reader and the slave role of the card by allowing balanced behavior between two wireless devices. In other words, the P2P mode allows the communication between two devices without the master/slave scheme.
A wireless device may embed a plurality of applications. When two wireless devices want to run a transaction, it is necessary to take measures to ensure that the applications active on both sides are mutually compatible. Such a configuration setting may be manually selected by a user. In this case, it is not convenient for the user and it takes time.
There is a need for automatically setting a configuration allowing a communication between two wireless devices.